Creative Uses for Plastic Horses and my Consumer Manifesto

Being a conscientious consumer is ripe with a myriad of ways of where to begin this quest.  Buying locally, re-used items over brand new, and thinking about the waste that is the result of each item you purchase is one way to start this important practice.  As my co-horts and I tackle this, please enjoy reading about this journey.  It will undoubtedly prove challenging and overwhelming, yet baby steps eventually turn into leaps.  My contributions to this blog will highlight my hiccups and successes as I exercise the essential practice of giving a damn where the products I purchase originate and are disposed.  

By default I’ve always practiced careful consuming on one level, most notably due to the fact that I detest shopping of any kind.  New clothes or items are usually introduced to my life out of absolute necessity.  For example, I have avoided purchasing new snow boots for his winter’s snow-pocalypse, and instead I sloshed around the streets of Boston with an old pair of hiking boots I purchased for a Costa Rica trip in 2005.  

These hiking boots do not make excellent snow kickers, but they provide adequate protection against the elements.  It is hard for me to justify purchasing a new pair of expensive snow boots, when that money can be used for other things like take out, or a night on the town (which in the winter almost always involves taxis).  This statement right here is an appropriate segway into where I can make the biggest leaps towards the direction of a more productive and sustainable lifelong commitment to changing my consuming habits.  
I am committing to buying local foods (or as local as I can get), and supporting Massachusetts based food economies.  Luckily Massachusetts is home to amazing micro brews and oyster fisheries (mmmmm, delicious bivalves).  To piggy back on this commitment, I will also only eat out twice a week (in hopefully a place that serves local foods) and it will be sit-in, not take out, which will cut down on package waste.  I will refuse before buying reused and will only purchase new if the situation demands the new item.  Furthermore I will write about the local concept as I hope it will dive me deeper into the culture of the cities I will travel to this month, London and Montreal.  
I ask you dear readers to hold me accountable, and to participate in this dialog by commenting.  If anyone is still reading, I do have a short story to offer as I started this commitment last week.  
I confess, the first week of not buying anything new was more difficult than expected.  The first hurdle was my self appointed task of decorating a room where a friends Texas themed going away party was being held.  Without the man hours and drive to make decorations with scraps from my craft bin - purchasing plastic party favors was the next inevitable move.  A credit card swipe and an hours worth of internal justifications later, I came up with some creative uses for my new mini horses and cowboy friends.  Luckily in my case, I’m privy to a group of friends who will also be making Texas their home later on this year.  Obviously Austin is the newest city to attract late twenty somethings from Boston, beating out San Francisco’s reign from 2003-2006, and Brooklyn’s reign from 2007- 2009.  I’m positive these decorations will be used again.  

An invitation for a baby shower in late March gave me another use for these decorations.  I fashioned a few pieces into a colorful mobile of cartoonish horses and plastic cowboys with guns. 

 In the end, I feel as though I have extended the life cycle of these decorations and have prevented the purchase of new ones.  The sad part of the story is the fact that all pieces will end up in a landfill, contaminating soil somewhere.  The lesson learned from this, and I’m sure with future posts is that creativity is an ally as I adhere to this lifelong commitment to ecological citizenship.